If the blockbuster successes of games like World of Warcraft and Counter-Strike, compared to the lack luster reception of ultra high end titles like Crysis, have taught us anything, it is that the vast majority of PC gamers are not running games which are incredibly graphics intensive. As low cost gaming consoles continue to steal many of these casual gamers away from the PC, component manufacturers for the PC platform are starting to think differently about how to approach the gaming market. As of late, we're seeing a significant and refreshing shift towards lower cost components for the mainstream market. Getting more performance for your dollar is now more exciting. - HotHardware

NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB Edition Card Review

The new GeForce 9600 GT is the first release of NVIDIA's GeForce 9 series that we're taking a look at. Typically, when NVIDIA launches a new lineup of graphics cards, we see a high-end component released first, which blows away previous benchmarks and instantly makes your current graphics card worthless. However, with the GeForce 9 lineup, we're seeing NVIDIA take a drastically different approach, releasing a mid-range card first. The first member of the GeForce 9 series is, at the moment, available at a sub-$200 price point. While this certainly shouldn't be perceived as NVIDIA giving up on the high-end of the market.

The GeForce 9600 GT is not based on an entire new architecture from the ground up, as its name implies. Rather, the architecture of the GeForce 9600 graphics processor heavily calls upon the latest GeForce 8800 series architecture, which of course isn't too shabby of an architecture to pull from. The GeForce 9600 GT is based on the NVIDIA G94 graphics processing unit. This GPU is manufactured on a 65nm process and is built upon a 64 stream processor architecture. With such a small amount of stream processors and a 65nm design, the GeForce 9600 GPU is quite small and won't cost as much to produce in volume.

And as for NVIDIA's reference design, their recommended clock speeds for the GeForce 9600 GT are 650MHz core with its shader clock set at 1625MHz. If those numbers seem strangely familiar, you may be on to something as they are the identical clock speeds of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB graphics card. The similarities don't end there, as you will see in a bit. However, in terms of the architecture, the GeForce 9600 can be considered roughly a halved version of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB. NVIDIA has made some improvements along the way, but in terms of pure GPU power, this is roughly what we have to work with.

NVIDIA's decision to launch a mid-range product as the first member of the GeForce 9 lineup will no doubt be met with some mild confusion on the part of gamers who are use to NVIDIA's normal big guns first release schedule. We'll admit, having NVIDIA state that the GeForce 8800 lineup is still the best for performance while the GeForce 9 is launching is a somewhat strange scenario, but in any case, we're happy to see NVIDIA pushing better performing cards to lower price points, and that's exactly what the GeForce 9600 GT aims to do. Coming at a nice price tag and still able to deliver great gaming performance.

The GeForce 9600 GT doesn't change much the mid-range lineup drastically, as it delivers similar performance levels to that of the GeForce 8800 GT and Radeon HD 3870 graphics cards at a slightly lower price point. Depending on which game you run, any one of these three cards can potentially come out the victor, but in general, they are all very close in the performance charts and are available at comparable price points. NVIDIA's GeForce 9600 GT is targeted a bit lower on the price spectrum, which makes its performance level more appreciable, but we'll have to wait and see the street prices any final judgements.

NVIDIA's new G94 graphics processor delivers surprisingly solid performance, considering it has a little more than half the stream processors than its bigger brother, the GeForce 8800 GT. Even so, through boosting the clock speeds, new compression algorithms, fast memory chips, and driver optimizations, NVIDIA can nail the same performance level while using less power and with a physically smaller GPU. For NVIDIA, this is certainly a win. For consumers, time will tell as street prices fall in line. It's certainly a wicked fast little chip considering its sub-$200 price point, and we're certain that NVIDIA will sell them by the truckload.

No don't expect your shiny new GeForce 9 card to blow away your friend's GeForce 8800 Ultra card in benchmarks. Not going to happen, as that's not what this GeForce 9 release is about. Of course, this is not the only GeForce 9 series card in the pipeline, and we're certain to all catch wind of future products from this new NVIDIA GPU family in the near future as well. All we can say at this point is that NVIDIA is off to another good start with the GeForce 9600 GT. We're looking forward to seeing what else they have up their sleeve next.